A composition with a formulation, based on a mass rationale for mixing ratios of 3 ingredients, is determined in addition to one or more ingredients for enhanced odor appeal; the composition is a non-sudsing surface cleaner. The composition requires no further chemical synthesis from the raw material components comprising the mixture. The inspiration for this invention came from the necessity to clean the stove top surface of the inventor's kitchen stove top. The stove top is a common stove top, with a metal surface coated with a white ceramic glaze. Inevitably, the surface would end up with rather stubborn stains and cooked on debris that would not easily come off using oven and stove cleaners available on the market or detergent cleaning agents available on the market. At the behest of using a metal knife for physically scraping off the soiled debris, with the risk of scratching the surface, the inventor used his background and knowledge as a chemistry teacher to develop and formulate a composition that would be effective in removing debris and cooked on soil from the stove top, while at the same time be safe for the environment and the user. Over time, the composition has been expanded to use on other surfaces including different metals, granite, glass, plastics, cloth, leather, wood, and surfaces made of polymers such as linoleum floors and vinyl surfaces. Types of stains and chemicals that the composition was successful and effective in removing were tested and determined to be baked on food, transition metal ions, ink, gum, glue and other adhesives, grease, oil, and tar.
This composition has been tested on several surfaces and stains. It has been tested as a grease spot remover on a pair of blue denim jeans that had a stubborn grease stain embedded into the fabric for more than a year. The jeans with the grease stain embedded in them had been worn and washed with laundry detergent multiple times, and the grease stain persisted. This surface cleaning compound was rigorously rubbed over the grease stain with a hard rubber scraper. The grease stain was completely removed from the denim jeans. This composition was also tested on the floor of a shower that had a blue stain from dripping water onto the shower floor. The floor is composed of a solid white acrylic polymer. The stain was successfully removed from the surface by wiping over the stain with the composition, using a soft cloth. Another test was performed of how the composition works on skin, where by oil and grease from changing the oil and oil filter in a car resulted in very oily and greasy hands. The composition successfully cleaned all the oil and grease off the hands, working much better than washing the hands with detergent and warm water. When this composition was tested on permanent ink, written on a plastic sandwich bag, it effectively removed the permanent ink from the surface of the bag. A spectacular example of the capability of this composition was demonstrated on removing gum from a cotton jacket. The composition was 100 percent effective in removing gum from the cotton fabric of a jacket. The gum was completely stuck and integrated into the threads of the fabric for over a week, after it was worn for an entire evening after being discovered that the gum was on the jacket. This use was discovered much after the provisional patent was filed; the point being, that more uses for this composition are being discovered as the need arises.
This invention is a composition of matter that can be used as a dual action surface cleaner, in general, for hard surfaces comprised of metal, plastic, wood, glass, granite, marble, concrete and various man made hard surfaces composed of polymers, as well as soft surfaces in cloth, fabric, clothing, leather, and man made fabrics. The invention also is effective as a skin surface cleaner for cleaning the head, including hair, as well as other areas of skin, such as the torso, hands, arms, feet, legs, fingers and toes, utilizing the same dual action. The composition contains ingredients all used for human consumption, so it is safe to use on the skin and safe for the environment.
The first aspect of the dual action involves the breaking of chemical bonds between surface molecules and the chemical soiling agent molecules or chemical residues via chemical activity of the composition, in conjunction with scouring activity and the mechanical action of firm rubbing with a soft cloth or hard rubber scraper, or other physical scouring device with a hardness of no greater than 2.5 on Moh's hardness scale. The second aspect of the dual action involves the action as a solvent on the surface stain or soiled residue compound. Because the proposed composition in this patent application has ionic species of alkali metal cations, hydronium cations, hydroxide anions and carbonate anions in water, it is an effective polar solvent. It also has an excess of sodium bicarbonate crystals mixed in monounsaturated and saturated hydrocarbons, as fatty acid triacylglycerols, suspended in water, rendering it an effective non-polar solvent. This composition in this application will remove water soluble residue or chemical components from a surface and also the composition has non-polar chemical components in the fatty acid hydrocarbon chain that render it as an effective solvent for fats, oils, permanent ink types, and many other chemicals that are not water soluble. The composition is effective in breaking chemical bonds of surface residue chemical components because there are several chemical species within the composition that have areas of polarity. These strong polar regions can be used to act upon different molecular and ionic surface stains. Such chemically active species within the composition are carboxylic acid, carbon-carbon double bonds and carbon-oxygen double, within the unsaturated fatty acid hydrocarbons as triacylglycerols, in addition to dissolved ions, including hydronium, sodium, carbonate, and hydroxide ions. It is a combination of these constituents that give the composition its properties and that makes it unique, and useful, and non-obvious or somewhat reclusive in the cognitive domain of human thought. It is counter intuitive to consider a composition with triacylglycerol fatty acids and water as a solvent; however the effect of combining it with sodium bicarbonate allows the fatty acids and water mixture to emulsify and integrate largely as a suspended colloidal phase with dual properties.
Evidence that the composition is not solely acting as a solvent exists in a simple test. If the composition is applied over the areas of a surface stain or surface residue that is desired to be removed, and allowed to set for several minutes to hours, there is no effective removal of the surface contaminant. Many times there is no noticeable effect in allowing the composition to be applied for an appropriate amount of time (minutes to hours) as to the removal of the surface contaminant.
Residue of burned on fats, carbohydrates, proteins, and other organic compounds such as glues, inks, dyes, oil and grease and inorganic soiling agents, such as stains from iodine or oxidized transition metal ions, or inorganic inks and dyes often get incorporated into the surfaces on metal and glass cooking ware, stove top surfaces, counter tops in the kitchen and bathrooms, wood floors, carpet, leather, vinyl, fabric, and other surfaces in general. Patents for cleaning compositions, each have their own unique uses and methods of cleaning surfaces with these aforementioned residues, rely on various chemicals such as the use of detergents, organic solvents, or compounds containing chemicals that alter pH or oxidation states, and in effect, remove the residue or soil in combination with the use of a scouring pad or other mechanical forced removal. When scouring pads such as steel wool or other substances that are composed of a material with greater hardness than the surface being cleaned, this can result in the undesirable effect of the surface being scratched up or marred. Often times the surface cleaners on the market today can be volatile or flammable, or they can be too reactive to be considered safe to use without protection of rubber gloves or aprons. Also many surface cleaners on the market can chemically damage some surfaces such as volatile organic polar solvents often dissolve plastic surfaces, and so they cannot be used on such surfaces. In addition, some surface cleaners on the market today leave behind an indelible mark, or discoloration on certain surfaces, and are only designed to clean a limited type of surface. Often times the directions for use of cleaning compositions will specifically detail what types of surfaces and what types of stain they are to be used on or not used on. They also mention the precautions and hazards associated with using the product.
Typical cleaning compositions are shown, for example, in the following United States of America patents:    U.S. Pat. No. 4,051,056 Hartman    U.S. Pat. No. 4,240,919 Chapman    U.S. Pat. No. 4,676,920 Culshaw    U.S. Pat. No. 6,268,325 Luciani et al.    U.S. Pat. No. 6,537,957 Cardola et al.    U.S. Pat. No. 6,767,878 Paye et al.
Because sodium bicarbonate, which has a hardness of 2.5 on Moh's hardness scale, is the solid component of the scouring agent in this composition, surfaces harder than this will not be scratched or marred when this composition is applied as a cleaning agent to clean and remove stains from the surface. Furthermore the water and fatty acid triacylglycerols mixed in with the sodium bicarbonate do not have the chemical properties of damaging most surfaces. In conclusion, this composition is useful, on many diverse surfaces and on many diverse polar and non polar surface stains.
Often the material residues or stains that soil a surface, are chemically attached to a surface in general; and they have varying chemical bonding properties with their surface and varying solubility properties with the cleaning agent used to remove them. A combination of these bonding and solubility properties enable residue and chemical soils to attachment to the surface and effectively inhibit their removal by methods dependent on the chemical properties of the chemical cleaning agent, especially if the properties of the residue oppose the properties of the chemical cleaning agent. For instance, the use of a water soluble cleaning agent in the use of removing a non-water soluble compound would result in generally undesirable effectiveness; the opposite would generally be true as well. In other words, a cleaning composition that is not water soluble would generally be ineffective in removing stains or residue that are water soluble.
The appropriate use of this composition for cleaning the aforementioned surfaces, with the aforementioned residues or chemical soiling agents, is an effective method of removing the soiled chemical residues from the surfaces. The action of the composition is two-fold, first by acting as a medium for use as physical scouring, without scratching any surfaces of greater than 2.5 hardness rating on Moh's hardness scale, and second, as a polar and non polar agent that will assist in dissolving and transporting the residue away from the surface in which it is incorporated as a stain. The composition, when used as a scouring agent, accompanying mechanical scouring with a soft cloth or hard rubber scraper, is effective in breaking surface bonds between the chemical residue or stain with the surface in which it is incorporated. The composition is then equipped to dissolve and carry away the constituent stain particles so that they can be wiped off with a cloth. As well, the composition when applied as a pretreatment, is effective in dissolving certain stains and residues from compounds that are weakly held to the surface and contain polar or non-polar molecules that can be dissolved or softened by the composition.
The dual action of the composition as a scouring medium, efficient in breaking bonds of surface residues and chemical soils from surfaces, and as a polar (water soluble) and non polar (fat soluble) solvent is also effective in removing gum, ink, oil, grease, and transition metal stains such as iron from soft cloth surfaces such as cotton, leather and vinyl.
The surface cleaning composition proposed for general use in this patent application contains a mass ratio of sodium hydrogen carbonate with a mass ratio of water and hydrocarbons, specifically, fatty acids as triacylglycerols. For purposes of maintaining a composition that more closely approximates a colloidal suspension, with minimal settling of the mixture components, the mass ratio for general use has been determined to be 70.5% sodium hydrogen carbonate, 17.3% fatty acids and 12.2% water.
This composition different from other surface cleaners in that this surface cleaning composition does not incorporate organic solvents, other than saturated and unsaturated fatty acids, where as other cleaning compositions contain alcohols, alkanes, amines, betaines, oxides, paraffins and other waxes. The surface cleaning composition in this application also does not incorporate bleaching agents. It also relies on sodium bicarbonate as its scouring agent as opposed to other compositions which use on or more salts of acetates, oxides, phosphates, sulfates, and sulfonates, and various mineral clays, silica, diatomaceous earth, feldspar, perlite, pumice, vermiculite, and mixtures thereof. In addition, the sodium bicarbonate in this surface cleaning composition has a dual use as a medium to assist in emulsifying the triacylglycerol fatty acids in a small amount of water; the sodium bicarbonate is also used as a medium to aid in the mechanical scouring of surface residue and chemical soils, without scratching the surfaces harder than 2.5, on Moh's hardness scale.